1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to electronic circuits and systems. More particularly, the present invention relates to communications systems for transmission of digital data.
2. Background Art
Television broadcasters often serve two different advertising markets, a national market and a local or affiliate market. Since the broadcast of local television signals is handled by local affiliates that only broadcast to a specific local area, it is straightforward for affiliates to sell targeted advertisements to local businesses interested in advertising locally. This model provides mutual benefits in the form of increased revenue opportunities for affiliate television studios and increased visibility for local businesses.
Recently, the increasing availability of broadband Internet connections has enabled new methods of real-time media delivery such as Internet streaming video. The worldwide nature of the Internet provides numerous benefits by breaking down physical and geographic barriers, but at the same time poses challenges for content providers in providing relevant and local advertising. Although users may voluntarily provide information regarding their location, the additional hassle of providing this information may deter users from accessing the content at all, and the accuracy of such user-volunteered information may be questionable. Thus, many content providers customize the advertising content based on variables stored in a server providing the content, rather than information volunteered by the user.
For example, one method of customization is to provide separate distinct website domains, each domain providing local content for each locality. This method requires the user to manually select the correct local domain. The user might know the name of the local broadcaster and search for the website by that name. Alternatively, the national broadcaster might have an entry page allowing users to select a local broadcaster website on an image map. In either case, the user is required to take additional inconvenient and error-prone steps to find the proper local broadcaster online.
Another common method of customization is to build a profile of the websites that a user commonly visits, then tailoring the content of advertisements to be relevant to the visited websites. This method is often implemented using a third party cookie technique, whereby a third party server tracks the website visiting habits of a user through a cookie. However, applying this technique to provide local advertising requires numerous preconditions to be met. First, the user must visit a significant number of websites with local content corresponding to the user location. Second, those websites must utilize the same third party advertising company. Third, the third party advertising company must offer geographically targeted services to regional advertisers, and retain advertisers operating in the same location as the user. Meeting all these preconditions concurrently may prove to be difficult.
Accordingly, there is a need to overcome the drawbacks and deficiencies in the art by providing a way to present locally customized advertising content in real-time Internet applications without requiring undue effort and inconvenience from users. Users thus benefit from advertising more likely to be of interest, local advertisers benefit from affordable exposure to targeted markets, and content providers benefit from additional revenue streams.